Deathblog: John Saxon (1936-2020)

‘Rock, Pretty Baby’ (1956)

with Letícia Román,‘The Girl Who Knew Too Much’ (1963)

with Fernando Poe Jr and a bunch of other dudes, ‘The Ravagers’ (1965)

with Bruce Lee, ‘Enter the Dragon’ (1973)

with Jim Kelly, ‘Enter the Dragon’ (1973)

‘Black Christmas’ (1974)

with Maurizio Merli, ‘Italia a Mano Armata’ / ‘Special Cop in Action’ (1976)

‘The Cynic, The Rat and The Fist’ (1977)

with Rex Harrison, Dharmendra and others, ‘Shalimar’ (1978)

with Giovanni Lombardo Radice, May Heatherly and Tony King, ‘Cannibal Apocalypse’ (1980)

‘Battle Beyond the Stars’ (1980)

‘Tenebrae’ (1982)

‘A Nightmare on Elm Street’ (1984)

‘Hands of Steel’ (1986)

‘Zombie Death House’ (also directed, 1987)

‘Nightmare Beach’ (1989)

I was very sad to hear this weekend that John Saxon has passed away at the age of 84.

Another one of those totemic, consistently great actors whose presence instantly takes the quality of any given film up a few notches, seeing Saxon’s name pop up on a set of opening credits is always a big “YES” / punch-the-air moment for me, and for many others out there too. And, as I think the photo gallery I’ve assembled above serves to illustrate, those moments tend to happen pretty frequently within the benighted corners of cinema to which I dedicate so much of my time.

He may never quite have achieved fame & fortune on the terms dictated by Hollywood, but few actors can boast a career as wild and woolly as the one summarised above, and, whether playing a karate champion, a clean-cut boyfriend, a chain-smoking detective, a mafia don or someone’s dad, John Saxon was always ineffably cool.

In fact, the way he could convincingly play such a wide variety of parts over so many years whilst essentially staying exactly the same, is a mystery which defies scientific explanation. John Saxon is always John Saxon, but that’s ok, because John Saxon is always good, and we always know he knows what’s up.

I’ve often wondered why he never (or at least, rarely) made the jump into leading man / action star type roles, as he clearly had both the charisma and the physical chops for it during his prime. (I mean, how many other actors could go toe-to-toe with Bruce Lee and Jim Kelly a few years before their 40th birthday and come out with a draw in the badass stakes?)

This is probably neither the time nor place to speculate on the ins and outs of Saxon’s career trajectory or the machinations of industry casting choices, but suffice to say, I’m pretty glad things worked for him they way they did. If he’d said ‘yes, sir’ to the studios in his early days and gone the squeaky-clean juvenile lead route… well, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be writing this right now, and pretty sure he wouldn’t have received a fraction of the love and adoration he received from cult/genre movie fans through subsequent decades.

Though usually classified as a ‘character actor’, he was a goddamn megastar to those of us who persist in watching those other movies, and his presence in the world will be greatly missed.

R.I.P.

Exploito All’Italiana / October Horrors # 3: Cannibal Apocalypse (Antonio Margheriti, 1980)

AKA ‘Invasion of the Flesh Hunters’, ‘Cannibals in the Streets’.

Readers who have been keeping up with my reviews of Italian exploitation films over the past few years will probably not need to be reminded that I am not a fan of the Italian cannibal sub-genre. Notwithstanding ‘Cannibal Holocaust’s allegedly subversive political message, I find the socio-cultural context of these films deeply uncomfortable, whilst their execution is generally shoddy and mean-spirited, and their inclusion of genuine animal cruelty footage is absolutely abhorrent.

So, not a fun time in order words, at least for those of us who can tear themselves free from the tangled webs of prurience and nostalgia that drive so many film fans to obsess over the damn things. If schlock masterworks like Zombi Holocaust have taught me anything however, it is that the weird interzone wherein cannibal movie tropes intersect with more fantastical elements (well, zombies, anyway) is, by contrast, almost always a whole lot of fun - but just tread carefully out there folks, and keep a close eye on the wildlife.

It was in this spirit that I recently found myself sitting down to watch Antonio Margheriti’s ‘Cannibal Apocalypse’, and I am thrilled to report that I found it to be perhaps the very best entry in the rarefied sub-sub-genre of cannibal/zombie cross-overs, and, in fact, one of the most wonderfully demented ‘80s Italian horror films I’ve seen to date.

Despite the redundancy of its blunt, ‘Cannibal Holocaust’-aping title, Margheriti’s film is a deeply eccentric affair (interestingly, it was released in Italy as the more quizzical / humourous ‘Apocalypse Domani’ – ie, ‘Apocalypse Tomorrow’). Scripted by the ubiquitous Dardano Sacchetti and shot at least partially in Atlanta, Georgia, ‘Cannibal Apocalypse’ entirely ditches the cannibal film’s usual “WASP assholes meet a sticky end in the jungle” formula in favour of a storyline that takes the Vietnam flashback anxieties of Bob Clark’s ‘Deathdream’ or John Flynn’s ‘Rolling Thunder’, the urban virus outbreak paranoia of Cronenberg’s ‘Rabid’ and the no-fucks-given combat zombie mayhem of Umberto Lenzi’s ‘Nightmare City’... then hits max power on the blender, with deliriously exhilarating results.

Things do at least begin in the jungle – or at least, in one of those versions of the Vietnam War recreated using potted plants and gel lighting on a small soundstage – wherein Sergeant John Saxon (YES) is leading his boys in an ambush against a deeply entrenched cell of Viet Cong guerrillas (an enjoyable away-day for the staff of the Chinese restaurant nearest to De Paolis Studios, presumably).

Once the waiters have been defeated, Saxon’s G.I.s do a quick recon on their hideout, and find two of their MIA buddies cruelly imprisoned in a hole in the ground topped with a bamboo cage. (One of them is played by pasty-faced Italio-gore regular Giovanni Lombardo Radice, and the name of his character is – I kid you not - Charles Bukowski.)

Unfortunately, it soon becomes clear that something is very wrong with Charlie and his fellow prisoner (Tom, played by blaxsploitation regular Tony King) – well, besides the obvious, I mean. That they are chewing on some suspiciously human-looking bones is perhaps forgivable given their grim circumstances, but the two men are also foaming at the mouth and seem entirely deranged and unable to sensibly communicate. Once they are released furthermore, they display a worrying tendency toward biting people, beginning with Sgt Saxon. Uh-Oh.

Now, if you’re awaiting some insight into the nature or origins of this cannibal/zombie plague, don’t hold your breath. The possibility that the Viet Cong infected the men with the virus for some reason seems rather distasteful, but nothing in the film specifically suggests this (although I suppose we might wonder why they were kept alive by their captors given that they’re obviously such a menace). It’s equally likely however that they just ran into a cannibal in the jungle, or perhaps they were exposed to some sort of chemical, or were bitten by an infected monkey, or, well... I don’t know! Your guess is as good as mine, as Margheriti and Sacchetti certainly give us sweet F.A. to work with here. These guys are just weird, demented cannibals now, alright? What more do you need to know?

Anyway, whatever subsequently happened in ‘Nam, stays in ‘Nam, as Saxon (I should switch to using his character name I suppose – NORMAN HOPPER, folks) wakes up in the traditional cold sweat, and we flash forward an unspecified number of years to find him back at home in the States, shakily readjusting to civilian life. Hopper’s wife (Elizabeth Turner) is a local TV news reporter, and they have a handsome, white timber period property in what looks to be a quiet, leafy suburb. He has nightmares and feels a bit funny sometimes (the glossy photos of war crimes and exploding huts he keeps pinned to the wall probably don’t help), but he’s basically doing ok.

As you might imagine, Charlie and Tom are doing considerably less ok. Confined to a high security mental institution, Tom has shown little sign of improvement vis-a-vis his feral, flesh-eating condition, but Charlie has managed to recover to some degree, and has in fact been granted a release from the hospital – which is quite an achievement, given that he basically looks clinically dead.

I’m unsure whether or not it was a conscious element of Dardano’s script, but there is definitely a strong class dynamic in play here re: the very different circumstances in which Norman and Charlie find themselves after their return from ‘Nam. This makes the scene in which Charlie (who is clearly destitute, and presumably homeless) calls up his former C.O. from a payphone to ask whether he wants to meet up for a beer feel extremely uncomfortable.

Obviously not relishing the prospect of chugging bud-lite in some dive whilst swapping “hey, remember that time you found me trapped in a hole gnawing a human thigh bone?” type stories, Norman turns Charlie down cold, but immediately feels guilty about his decision – and rightly so perhaps, in view of what goes down next.

Given the bums rush by Norm, Charlie does what any lonely, traumatized Vietnam vet would do, and goes to see an Umberto Lenzi war movie which is playing down the block. Distracted by the enthusiastic necking of the couple in front of him however, our boy soon snaps and decides he fancies a chunk of that neck for himself.

This prompts an extraordinary series of events that see Charlie fleeing the cinema, blood dripping from his lips and a crowd of outraged / terrified patrons in close pursuit, at which point he attacks another woman and gets involved in a ruckus with a gang of dirt bike-riding “punks” (what?). Fleeing for his life, he soon finds himself under siege inside what appears to be a large indoor market that has closed for the day.

This being Georgia, the market naturally boasts a fully-stocked gun shop, and, one or two shotgun-blasted bikers and a security guard later, the cops are outside in force, as an irascible detective with a cowboy hat and a delightful “fuck you” attitude loses patience with the bullhorn / talk-him-out approach and prepares to get busy with the tear gas.

To break out of “plot synopsis hell” for a moment, I think it was at around this point that I first paused to shake my head and exclaim “wow, this movie is AWESOME”. Perhaps the paragraphs above don’t quite convey this awesomeness, making the film instead sound like a grim, violent trudge, but seriously – all this chaotic, hap-hazard action is a pure joy, and more than anything I think, it’s the incongruous mixture of berserk Italio-exploitation mayhem and ‘70s Deep South thriller vibes (cf: ‘Macon County Line’, or the aforementioned ‘Rolling Thunder’) that really won me over.

Anyway – as soon as Norman hears of all this hullaballoo on the TV news, he rushes straight down to help out, infiltrating the market using his superior Commando Skills™, and defusing the situation by persuading a tearful Charlie to come out with his hands up.

Thereafter however, Norman’s fragile mental stability swiftly begins to collapse. He starts sweating and grasping his head, and feels an inexplicable hunger for…. well, you guessed it. In a bizarre turn of events, the frumpy teenage girl who lives next door picks this moment to pop over with the intention of seducing Norman, and, uh….well, as he confesses to his wife that evening in a fit of remorse, “it’s not what you think - I just felt an uncontrollable urge to BITE her..”. (So that’s fine then.)

You can probably imagine the general drift the story takes after this, although ‘drift’ feels too mild a word to really describe the raging whirlwind of cannibal hospital breakouts, high velocity ambulance hi-jacks, gory-drenched flesh-eating, random jump-scare virus outbreaks and public hysteria that comprise the final act of ‘Cannibal Apocalypse’, all climaxing with Norm, Charlie and Tommy reunited along with a cannibal-ised female doctor in the sewers beneath Atlanta, heavily armed and gearing up for a fight-to-the-death against flamethrower-wielding cops, in a finale that appears to wish to pay tribute to – of all things – ‘The Third Man’. (1)

Man, what a movie. I confess, I didn’t think old Antonio had it in him, but he really knocked it outta the park on this one.

As dedicated Italian horror fans will be aware, Antonio Margheriti was well known in the industry through the ‘60s and early ‘70s for his then innovative multiple camera shooting technique, which, as I understand it, saw him filming entire scenes as master-shots taken from several different angles, then cutting the results together later to give the illusion that multiple camera set-ups had been used.

Though undoubtedly efficient, this method had the unfortunate effect of making much of Margheriti’s work feel flat and rather bland in comparison to that of his more stylistically daring peers in Italian genre cinema, and his reputation has suffered as a result, despite the wealth of extremely effective moments scattered through his filmography.

I’m unsure whether or not Margheriti was still using his multiple camera technique by the time he got around to ‘Cannibal Apocalypse’ (the profound tedium of The Squeeze would tend to suggest it was still in full effect in the late ‘70s), but either way, he sure put a rocket under it this time around, resulting in a hyper-energised, highly original movie whose “literally ANYTHING could happen next” atmosphere makes it, for my money, the director’s most rewarding film since 1964’s ‘Castle of Blood’.

Riding hard on the heels of Lenzi’s ‘Nightmare City’ and Deodato’s ‘Atlantis Interceptors’, ‘Cannibal Apocalypse’ is one the wildest action-horror rampages of its era, and as such comes highly recommended.

Unfortunately however, John Saxon himself thinks otherwise, and has spent many years deriding this film as a disgusting travesty and claiming that he was more or less hood-winked into appearing in it under false pretences – all of which makes me very sad.

I mean, if he’d found himself top-billed in ‘Make Them Die Slowly’ or ‘SS Experiment Camp’ or something, I could understand his position, but, besides the title, there’s really very little here to cause offense to anyone comfortable with the idea that violent horror movies exist – never mind a guy who happily turned up every morning to make Blood Beach, and directed a movie named Zombie Death House a few years later.

Sure, it made the ‘Video Nasties’ list in the UK, but so did ‘The Werewolf and The Yeti’ ferchrissakes. There is no animal cruelty here, minimal sexual violence, and the gory bits are pitched more or less at the level you’d reasonably expect of an early ‘80s horror movie with this kind of subject matter. So c’mon John, what’s the deal? Lighten up a bit.

[DISCLAIMER: If it turns out John Saxon is simply holding a grudge because he never got paid or something, I will respectfully withdraw the above criticism and take his side. I know it’s been nearly forty years, but keep bad mouthin’ these muthas ‘til they pay up John! We’re with you all the way!]

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(1)As with the film’s refusal to bother even trying to explain the origins of its cannibal/zombie virus, I enjoyed the vast, plot convenience-defined variations in the time the virus takes to manifest itself; John Saxon apparently exhibits no symptoms for actual YEARS after he is bitten in ‘Nam, whilst supporting characters infected later in the movie flip out and start biting people in a matter of minutes.

Exploito All’Italiana: Blazing Magnum / ‘Strange Shadows in an Empty Room’ (Alberto De Martino, 1976)

Shot in Ottawa, Canada with a largely American cast, ‘Blazing Magnum’ is one of those latter-day Italian co-productions that tries so hard to hide its Italian origins that viewers coming to it blind may be apt to think they’ve simply stumbled upon some sublimely ridiculous Canadian TV movie. For those of us ‘in the know’ however, the fingerprints of producer Edmondo Amati and director Alberto De Martino (whose other joint ventures included 1974’s ‘El Antichristo’ and 1977’s ‘Holocaust 2000’) can be identified all too plainly in the movie’s woefully damaged plotting and unwavering dedication to the cause of senseless mayhem.(1)

Though often listed as a poliziotteschi on the basis that it is a ‘70s cop movie made by Italians, ‘Blazing Magnum’s transatlantic status lends it an entirely different feel from the kind of crime films being made in Italy at around the same time, and, despite Amati and De Martino’s obvious desire to crib as much as possible from the gospel laid down by ‘Bullitt’, ‘Dirty Harry’ and ‘The French Connection’, the end result isn’t quite like any other crime film I’ve ever seen.

To cut a long story short, what I think happened here is that the scriptwriters (see footnote above) had an unused treatment for a run-of-the-mill giallo lying around, but, realising that this wasn’t really what internationally-minded producers like Amati were looking for in the mid’70s, they took the decision to graft a load of testosterone-huffing, hard-boiled cop action onto the shell of their story, whilst crucially failing to actually incorporate the latter elements into the thread of the pre-existing narrative in any meaningful fashion.

What emerged, needless to say, is an unwieldy genre Frankenstein whose Hollywood cast and incongruous Canadian locations (presumably adopted for tax shelter purposes) serve to further confuse the film’s identity – especially given that the giallo segments are leavened with just about enough horror and sleaze elements to allow the film to be misleadingly foisted upon the U.S. public as ‘Strange Shadows in an Empty Room’, with a proto-slasher poster to match (see below). (2)

As such, we first meet Captain Tony Saitta (Stuart Whitman) – an allegedly rule-breaking, mad dog middle-aged cop with an incongruously compassionate, sleepy demeanour – as he single-handedly takes down a gang of violent, heavily armed bank robbers, his titular Magnum leaving two of the perps dead, as the remaining crook cowers before him and begs for mercy. (PRO-TIP: apparently if you stand behind a column and just step out to pick them off quite quickly, those desperate criminals with high calibre machine guns just *won’t stand a chance*.)

Whilst Tony was doing that however, he missed a call from his sister Louise, a drama student played by the at-least-thirty-years-his-junior Carole Laure (who probably won’t thank me for listing her other credits as including ‘Naked Massacre’ (1976) and ‘Get Out Your Handkerchiefs’ (1978)). Later that night, poor Louise is dead, her heart having mysteriously failed shortly after she was given a tonic by one Dr Tracer (Martin Landau) when she had a funny turn at a campus party.

When it transpires that Louise had been seen in public earlier that day having a violent argument with said doctor, her brother is on the case, and for the next twenty minutes or so, everything goes a bit ‘Colombo’ as we trudge through earnest interviews with the deceased’s nearest and dearest and unnecessary background on Landau’s character. (Though a fine actor, Landau is such a pointless red herring here he might as well have come to work in a fish costume.) No Magnums, blazing or otherwise, are in evidence, and at this point this movie’s prospects ain’t looking too hot, to be honest.

Stick with it though, because when ‘Blazing Magnum’ does heat up – oh boy.

The first sign that we’re in for something a bit more memorable than an afternoon TV time-waster comes when, out of nowhere, we see a streetwalker violently bludgeoned to death in a darkened alleyway, then witness her dismembered remains discovered the next morning when some unlucky construction workers fire up the conveyor belt at a local quarry. All of which is a bit of a shocker, to be honest.

Before you know it, the great John Saxon (sadly under-utilised here as Whitman’s exposition-spouting partner) has managed to keep a straight face whilst delivering the immortal line, “Remember that girl we found in the rock crusher? Turns out she wasn’t a girl at all!”, and, armed with some tenuous connection to the death of his sister (I forget quite what), Captain Saitta immediately hits the nearest sex shop for some leads on Ottawa’s transvestite hooker scene.(3)

This promptly leads our hero to a swanky rooftop apartment shared by three drag queens, who are seemingly busy dolling themselves up for a day(?) on the town. Saitta barges in and starts firing questions at them without even identifying himself, which isn’t very nice, but even so, the drag queens’ reaction is a bit excessive.

Basically, they immediately set out to kill him like a pack of wild animals - hurling furniture, lunging at him with knives, and eventually leaving him dangling by his fingers from the rooftop. Needless to say, when Tony gets back on his feet to retaliate, there follows what I believe is referred to as a ‘knock-down, drag-out fight’, incorporating several slow motion plunges through shattering French windows and concluding only when Saitta has the last conscious cross-dresser cornered at gun-point in their en-suite swimming pool.

I confess, it took me quite a while to retrieve my jaw from the floor after this outburst of wanton fury, but I needn’t have bothered really, as from hereon in, ‘Blazing Magnum’ just never lets up.

The great thing about the series of adrenaline-pumping action sequences that comprise the middle half hour of this movie is that they are so brazenly gratuitous, so totally removed from the vaguely credible chains of cause and effect that usually drive such police procedural storylines, that they barely graze the surface of the central murder mystery plotline at all. Instead, we watch with something near to awe as each contrived set-piece concludes with Sciatta merely discovering another who-cares-anyway ‘clue’ that he could have more easily ascertained simply by talking to people – and sometimes not even that.

A perfect case in point comes when, whilst working through a list of known fences who may or may not have handled the stolen necklace that may or may not hold the key to his sister’s death (or something), Sciatta pursues a fleeing suspect for a full five minutes of screen time in a desperate foot chase through a crowded subway station, eventually cornering him in a toilet cubicle and forcing his head into a full wash basin trying to make him to “talk!”, as members of the public look on aghast. We then cut immediately to Whitman back above ground, sharing a coffee with Saxon in the patrol car and saying something to the effect of “eh, that guy didn’t know anything”, before they head off to terrorize the next poor rube on their list. Incredible.

This pattern is repeated, amplified to the power of ten, for what is unquestionably ‘Blazing Magnum’s highlight – an prolonged car chase that must be seen to be believed. This begins when Sciatta knocks on the door of another fence, who again flees for no readily apparent reason [well to be fair, the way Whitman’s character behaves in this film, I’d probably run away from him too] and jumps in his bad-ass ‘70s muscle car. Sciatta is soon behind the wheel of his own bad-ass ‘70s muscle car, and the chase is on.

A blatant attempt to top the legendary chase in ‘Bullitt’, this sequence may lack the tension and technical acumen of Peter Yates’ film, but in terms of pure, death-defying spectacle, it beats it hands down. I mean, seriously folks – I may have been pretty snarky about this film up to this point, but the stunt-driving showcased here is incredible, becoming more so as the chase continues far beyond the point at which we might have naturally expected it to end, eventually climaxing with a jump-through-the-middle-of-a-moving-train stunt that would have done mid-‘80s Jackie Chan proud.

Though it is largely captured through fairly conventional long-shots, and takes place on obviously cleared streets and disused parking lots (complete with conspicuous piles of empty cardboard boxes), this is nonetheless high octane, gonzo action movie business of the highest order, and whatever those drivers got paid, it wasn’t enough. Mercy, as the Big O might have exclaimed.

By the time the chase concludes, both cars are mangled wrecks, still skidding after each other on their sides along a final few hundred yards of empty highway. And when the drivers emerge and dust themselves down, can you guess how the ensuing conversation goes? As I recall, it’s something like;

SCIATTA: ah, sorry about the scratches, heh heh
FENCE: no worries cop, what can I do for ya?

I really have no words with which I can express my reaction to that. I’d make a sound, but it doesn’t really work in written text.

Seemingly realising that they’re never going to be able to top that in terms of action, the final half hour of ‘Blazing Magnum’ reverts back to the giallo/thriller angle, as the desperate killer, realising the cops are closing in, and breaks out a big, shiny knife to begin stalk n’ slashing his/her (no spoilers here, folks) way through the remaining cast in much the way that desperate killers are want to do in these things.

This last minute reign of terror begins with a botched attempt to take out Whitman’s sister’s angelic blind roommate (played by a pre-‘Zombie Flesh Eaters’ Tisa Farrow), thus demonstrating that the script-writers have also seen the Audrey Hepburn movie ‘Wait Until Dark’ (1967), and precedes to bring us a few bracing moments of theatrical gore and entry-level misogynist sleaze, before the inevitable cavalcade of twists, flashbacks and curtain pulls finally bring us to an agreeably loopy, magnum-blazin’ finale that I won’t spoil for you here.

And, there you have it ladies and gents – ‘Blazing Magnum’, a film that truly has it all.

Actually, the one thing it WAS missing, and that I think may have raised proceedings to a whole new plateau of inadvertent genius, is a scene in which Tony Sciatta is hauled in for a meeting with his superior officer, to explain why, in the space of one working day, he has instigated a brawl that caused extensive property damage and left two people unconscious, nearly drowned an innocent man in a public bathroom, written off his car after driving it straight through a toll-booth and contributing to at least six major traffic accidents, and interviewed an important witness at gun-point in a motel room doorway…. all in the pursuit of a case he hasn’t even yet been officially assigned to work on!

I mean, maybe that’s just the way the cops roll up in Ottawa, but lord, imagine what Harry Callahan could have done with such a free hand. Hell, maybe someone over in ‘70s-movie-cop-land should have put the two of them in touch and suggested a job swap… especially given that Stuart Whitman spends most of this movie looking as if he’d be happier attending a poetry reading at the City Lights bookshop.

Well, anyway. I’m sorry to have relied so heavily on the “…and then this thing happens” school of movie-reviewing on this occasion, but when faced with an item like ‘Blazing Magnum’, it really seems the only sensible option.

By any conventional yardstick, this is not a good film. The direction is formulaic, the pacing, plotting and tone are all a complete mess (as is discussed at length above), and, whilst no one is questioning the chops of Whitman, Saxon or Landau, performances remain wooden throughout, in that particular “what the hell am I doing here? I’ll just say the lines” manner common to ill-conceived international co-productions the world over.

Shallow, cynical and pointless as ‘Blazing Magnum’ may be though, it is nonetheless – as I hope I have made clear above – the kind of movie that will leave action/exploitation fans utterly satiated, beaten into submission by more ridiculous fun stuff than they can possible process in one sitting. So if that sounds like a recommendation to you - take it!

Whilst I hate to fall back once again on food metaphors, watching ‘Blazing Magnum’ eventually ends up feeling a bit like sitting on the sofa for ninety minutes with a plate of cheap hamburgers in front of you, gradually eating them just because, well, you might as well.

A feeling of bloated dissatisfaction and vague spiritual emptiness is the inevitable result, but nonetheless, I feel it is a challenge many of my readers here will wish to take on - so pass the f-ing ketchup and let’s get on with it, I’ve got the disc right here.

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(1) We may also wish to note at this point that screenwriters Vincenzo Mannino and Gianfranco Clerici went on to collaborate on such projects as ‘House On The Edge of the Park’, ‘The New York Ripper’ and Fulci’s ‘Murder Rock’, whilst each can also boast a similarly illustrious (ahem) list of solo credits.

(2) Whilst on the subject of this movie’s faux-horror re-titling, I can’t express the extent to which it saddens me that, even during the high watermark for human civilization that was the 1970s, there apparently weren’t enough punters willing to buy a ticket to see Stuart Whitman and John Saxon in ‘Blazing Magnum’, as advertised by the poster at the top of this post, when it hit their local cinemas. Proof positive that, then as much as now, people just don’t know what’s good for them.

(3) For more memorable examples of John Saxon knocking off ludicrous dialogue like a pro, see my earlier ruminations on ‘Blood Beach’ (1980).

Some Thoughts on… Blood Beach (Jeffrey Bloom, 1980)

I don’t know, maybe I’ve just been looking in the wrong places, but this little movie seems to get a pretty bad rap within horror fandom. I mean, of course I understand that those coming to it expecting a routine slasher or a Tremors/Deadly Spawn style monster-bash or something might not get very far with it, but even such sources as Bleeding Skull, where you’d expect an off-beat mess of a film like this to find a natural home, don’t seem to think much of it.

Quoth Dan Budnik on page 14 of the otherwise admirable and highly recommended Bleeding Skull book: “Everyone does their best to be as much of a ‘character’ as they can, but it just doesn’t hold. The scenes between the attacks just aren’t very memorable. They’re clichéd and sometimes boring.”

What can I say - with all due respect to Dan, I felt differently. In fact, I had a wonderful time with ‘Blood Beach’, and particularly enjoyed its unhurried, lugubrious approach to staging a monster movie. Well, things are always subjective aren’t they, and fleeting impressions created by late night viewings of trash-horror films more so than most.

It is sometimes said of horror that a successful movie is one that would remain interesting even if the threatening/supernatural element were removed. I don’t know whether that’s a credo I’d always subscribe to, but in this case it seems apt. In contrast to Mr. Budnik, I found myself largely ambivalent to the antics of the carnivorous subterranean beast inexplicably feasting on sunbathers and joggers beneath the sands of Santa-Monica through the duration of ‘Blood Beach’. Instead, I was pleasantly captivated by the miscellaneous goings on that surrounded it. I mean, sure, it was nice to have the monster there. It gave the characters something to do, and gave us an insight into what they might react when stressed, confused or frightened. It catalyzed the events of the film, you might say. But, for me at least, it wasn’t really the central point of the piece.

Anyone who has read this blog for long enough will know that I have a soft spot for that particular kind of disconnected, quasi-bohemian sense of otherness that seems to characterise horror films set around Southern Californian beach communities. From Night Tide through Messiah of Evil to ‘The Witch Who Came From The Sea’, these locales seem to lend a very specific ‘vibe’ to horror films, and, despite being a considerably more linear proposition than the aforementioned examples, ‘Blood Beach’ has it in spades.

You wouldn’t exactly call this an ‘artistic’ or technically accomplished movie. Indeed, in objective terms you may even by justified in deeming it a ‘bad’ movie – one that is poorly paced and sloppily directed with wildly erratic performances, and certainly one that largely fails to deliver on promise of its somewhat legendary poster (see above). Nevertheless though, it has its moments. The photography is very nice (insofar as I can tell from the terribly degraded version I’m watching – see below), and the musical score sounds surprisingly slick and accomplished for this kind of film.

In between ‘Blood Beach’s more eventful moments, there are many shots of stuff like a guy standing by the sea-front playing a violin, lengthy close-ups of a grown woman doing a paint by numbers picture – you know, that sort of thing. All this eccentricity is a tad over-done perhaps, but director Jeffrey Bloom seems very much concerned with building a sense of place around his characters, and I can dig that. I always enjoy films set in locales that I feel I’d enjoy living in. Do I want to see this place torn apart by some big carnivorous worm? Hell no! I feel quite strongly about it in fact, just like the characters do.

Admittedly, there is a kind of self-conscious quirkiness to a lot of the lackadaisical goings-on here that some may find off-putting, but at the same kind there’s a peculiar earnestness about them too - a gentle, deliberate approach that conversely led to me finding this film is very charming.

For instance, you’ve got this one guy, a minor character who works with the main male lead as a lifeguard, or harbour patrol officer, or something. Said guy has a pretty wild mop of curly hair, and he can’t stick around for the night shift, because, quote, “I’m planning to BOOGIE tomorrow night, and I haven’t slept in a week!”. Say no more, brother – male hero guy understands. In a lesser film, such a conversation would probably provide lead-up for some ho-hum monster/killer set piece. Here, it initially leads nowhere, but eventually sets us up for a delightful scene later in the film where we see curly-hair guy getting his boogie on in a cramped and beer-sodden local bar.

Turns out he is the shirt & tie wearing, Joe Cocker-esque vocalist in a sweaty pub rock band. This is a short scene, no fanfare and it just sort of comes out of nowhere, but it’s great. It has a very authentic feel, and it looks like everyone present is having a really good time. An anonymous female singer gets up from the audience, takes a mic, and her and Curly do a few verses of this really haggard, sub-Gram & Emmy-Lou style wind-swept ballad together. Everyone in the crowd cheers them on (or at least they do in my head). It is awesome. I wish I was there.

Similarly, well, actually quite dissimilarly but you take my point, the soap opera-esque plot line about the main harbour patrol guy getting back together with his old flame after her Dad and his fiancée were both eaten by the beach-monster was quite diverting – strangely touching in its earnest, am-dram sorta fashion.

Meanwhile, Burt Young is in this movie too, which is always a treat. He is hanging around playing a fish-out-of-water sidekick to the main police detective, transferred in from Chicago. His character is very ‘one joke’, but boy can Burt Young ever do ‘one joke’ well. He dresses like a 1920s gangster and he keeps saying stuff like “I tells ya, dis wouldn’t happen in Chicago, hyuk hyuk”. He seems to be drunk much of the time, and a lot of his dialogue is slightly incomprehensible. It’s nice to have him around.

Then, after a while, no less a personage than John Saxon himself turns up, playing a hard-headed police captain who is charged with delivering some of the most ridiculous dialogue I’ve heard in a motion picture in recent memory (“you snot-nosed, scissor-billed crow-bait”, he calls an elderly woman at one point).

Saxon has a great two hander scene with this incredibly untogether, wigged out scientist guy they dug up from somewhere, who speaks in the most unbearably disjointed, monotonous sort of manner for ages and ages about what he conjectures that this beach monster may or may not be. (“What I’m trying to do is… try to define… some kind of living THING… perhaps a creature currently, uh, in a state of a evolution… that CRAWLS, subterraneanly… in, uh… MOIST, probably dark… places…?”.) Saxon, getting increasingly irate, tells him, “You gotta lot of scientific mumbo-jumbo that’s about as much use as whiskers on a sausage!”. Frankly I think someone was putting lines like that in the script for a dare, just to see whether John Saxon could get through them without breaking his straight-faced composure. Needless to say, he bats every one straight back like a pro. It’s a joy to behold.

Now that we’ve got all that straight, let’s sit back and reflect. The Joe Cocker bar band guy, the earnest lifeguard guy and his old flame, Burt Young, John Saxon, the rambling old scientist and their pals – they’re all going to get together to combat a carnivorous subterranean beast inexplicably feasting on sunbathers and joggers beneath the sands of Santa-Monica. How are they going to do it? What ideas will they come up with, and what challenges will they face? I bet you want to find out too, to share this strange journey with them.

Well, don’t worry, you have plenty of time. ‘Blood Beach’ only just got going. If you came for gore and boobs and the not-so-special effects, what can I tell you – the exit is that way. But if you’ve got time for Burt and John and the gang, and you like the thought of hanging out with them and maybe sharing a coffee in a paper cup from the refreshments shack in between searching the sand for body parts (Quoth Burt: “say, what colour eyes did ya stewardess have, I mean, uh, had..?”) and ruminating over what might have happened to that nice old lady who used to go jogging along the sea-front – welcome aboard. I don’t care what anybody says, ‘Blood Beach’ is awesome.

(As a final note, it’s possible I might have enjoyed this film even more if the bootleg copy of it I was watching didn’t appear to be a 3rd gen, cropped VHS rip downloaded from the internet in 1996. I have subsequently tried by best to obtain a proper copy, and am even willing to pay money for the privilege, but no dice apparently. Surely a watchable version of this charming motion picture must have hit the streets at some point! Can anybody help? ‘Blood Beach’ fans, stand up and be counted! If I’m not watching this on blu-ray by the end of 2015, can we really say that the great journey of the human race has truly been worthwhile? You tell me.)